I looked up Addison-Wesley and Prentice Hall; they told me some things, but not nearly enough (such as: how do I do text boxes? tables? how do I do cross-references in such a way that they'll survive typesetting? should I do this in LaTex, or Word, and are there template files?).

I beg of you, don't use WORD and those horrid text boxes. They "float" on the page, and they have become my latest nightmare as I carefully go through the WORD document to rescue all the floaties that got skimmed off when I imported the text to desktop publishing software.

InDesign is the upgrade from PageMaker, and I absolutely love it. I was a PageMaker user, and I have had virtually no learning curve at all to transition into InDesign. But then, I'm a graphic designer at my core (when I'm not writing.)

But you are not attempting to do the final layout are you?

That would be craziness. Submit a Word file to the publisher AND A PDF AND HARD COPY , and let the publisher's designer work it out. You will get a better result. A good publisher and designer will redo all your graphs, charts and graphics anyway. They will design page layout according to a grid that best suits its purpose and best conveys a sense of how the information in the text is organised. It may be one column, two or more or they may want to include breakouts or margin comments or even a notes column in the grid.

Let me say one thing (The biggest publication I have been involved with was 600pp full colour guide to the Wildlife of the Tropical North Queensland, 2600 images, footnotes maps etc) you will have to be a screaming martinet when it comes to checking proofs. The designer will grow to shudder at your shadow darkening their doorway but you have to be that way. Make the process as idiot proof as you can and maybe they will return the favour.

PS: Of all those who contribute to these boards I suggest you seek out mikemunsil's advice as I believe he may may be able to help with your specific query or alternatively seek submission guidelines from a range of publishers who publish the sort of books you aspire to produce. I have also seen a number of such text books produced by an author with huge support from a local university, see if you can create a relationship with an organisation that can support you with such things as editorial advice etc. Many Universities have their own publishing houses too. Ask one of them what they prefer to receive.

The thing I was saying, about the boxes in WORD, is that the stuff you do to your background manuscript affects the designer and the time it takes to massage your text into camera ready documents ready for print.

My current nightmare, as I mentioned, used the box feature in Word to draw a box, then insert text into the box. THIS is not the right way to prep a manuscript for DTP. As I said, the boxes "float" and when you import the text into DTP the boxes all get skimmed off and you lose them.

If you want to "box" something, type the text inline with the rest of the manuscript, then draw a box with no fill to float over the top of the text. Either way, your designer will have to fiddle with the manuscript, but at least this way she/he won't have to spend hours and HOURS going back and copying and pasting all the boxed text back into the main body of the manuscript.

I have strong emotions about this one right now. I'm on lesson 3 of a 24 lesson curriculum. It takes me anywhere from 15 minutes to 1/2 hour simply to repair the damage done by using these floaty boxes in WORD. Not to mention the fact that I'm paranoid I'm going to miss one and we won't notice until we've published and distributed this curriculum to our national audience. *shudder*

If so, I need to know how to put in text boxes, tables, etc., in this MS format. And I want to keep the index, the cross-refs, etc. -- it would be murder to recreate them at the end.

I have done LaTeX, but it doesn't fit AFAIK with the sort of textbook I'm thinking of (notes in the margin, kind of like in For Dummies).

Along the same lines as Elan, I woud say don't include graphs, tables or anything like that in the text file. You are much better-off doing something inline in the text like this: (use line breaks to draw attention to the comment)

quote:

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( ** Insert Figure 12a )

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Then supply all the graphs and figures, graphics and illustrations and tables on separate sheets (and as a separate file) clearly marked with your name, the publication and the figure number AND the caption that goes with the graphic.

The same works for footnotes, keep them separate if possible and clearly marked as to where they belong ie with a title :

quote:

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Footnotes: Chapter 01

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For breakouts do similar to the above ie:

quote:

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( ** Suggested Breakout 5: How to do the C++ Cha Cha! )

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Keep the breakouts on a separate file too. The publisher may or may not have room for them and they are often seen as 'optional extras' and so the text and the breakout need to make sense independently. You may find the editor asks you to write a couple of extra breakouts to more clearly illustrate a point, again supply separate file and hardcopy albelled as per all other breakouts.

All these separate files need to be clearly marked and supplied as a FILE, HARD COPY and as PDF. Like I said, the more organised you can present the information to the publisher and their designer, the better your result will be.

Remember: Be assiduous with the proofreading. Take nothing for granted. The designer is always paranoid about missing something but something almost always gets missed. The consequences can range from the negilgible to the catastrophic. When it happens it is never intentional. The more logically sequenced and presented the text the less likely there will be catastrophic mistakes, the process will run more smoothly and the editor, designer and publisher will be more confident with your professionalism so they will all be more inclined to work with you again.

PS: Why supply a PDF? In a pinch a designer can import a PDF graphic directly into a design application, especially if they are using an Adobe product like InDesign, or they can import it into Illustrator and redraw it accurately.)

quote:

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In a pinch a designer can import a PDF graphic

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There is no pinching required with InDesign. It imports PDFs with ease. It exports AS a PDF just as easily. In fact, most printers/service bureaus prefer PDF format anymore, as it eliminates a lot of the problems with missing fonts and files.

I noticed the numerous recommendations for InDesign on the self-publisher forum I subscribe to. It stirred me to bite the bullet and upgrade from PageMaker. InDesign can also import Excel files and tables. I'm tellin' ya, if you are producing any project that has to go to press, it's sweet software.

And, Adobe -- in their wisdom -- has made a fully functioning trial version of InDesign available FOR FREE DOWNLOAD on their website: www.adobe.com . You would be well advised to have broadband to try downloading it, however. You can try it out for free for 30 days. If you have Quark or Pagemaker you can upgrade.

InDesign is great and it's soooo much cheaper than Quark. That's why I was coerced into using it. Its just a learning curve right now... mutter, mutter...

I love Acrobat for proofing and approvals, its fantastic. If you can get the full version, not just the reader, do it, you won't regret it.

PS: Elan, I always seem to screw-up the colour profiles on CMYK jobs or wind up with a loss in saturation in the darker colours and black. I still haven't got a handle on PDFs and spot colour ie duotone/tritones etc How do you check screen angle on spot colours in Indesign and make sure that info comes through in the PDF?

Elan, any suggestions?

My gut says to include the index as part of the file AND as hardcopy and let the publisher sort that one out. I just don't think there is an easy way to get that info to convert to a layout program as page numbers are all over the place and change in the design process..

But Hoptoad, if you want to email me some things you'd like help figuring out, I can see if I can manage to stumble across the features. Primarily, I find that if I wrack my PageMaker brain, I can usually identify WHERE to look in InDesign. There are only a couple of places they've made a significant change to how you access a particular feature. Most of the time I figure out it's because the feature has been so dramatically enhanced, that it's been given it's own little special area. You can email me at buce@charter.net

And Will, I'll take a look at the indexing functions. PageMaker was a bit weak in that area, I thought. I'm hoping InDesign sings. I could sure use a great Table of Contents function!!